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I recently accepted a position from Teach and Learn with Georgia, a Georgian Ministry of Education program designed to bring native speakers of English into classrooms around the country. I will be moving to Georgia in August of 2014 to begin my assignment.

Before this latest adventure, I studied at Bogazici University in Istanbul Turkey and at Azerbaijan University of Languages. I speak English German Spanish, Turkish Azerbaijani and Uzbek and am currently trying my hand at Georgian.

Friday, March 8, 2013

The Fatherland

That's my residency permit on the right, with my Passport for scale

So. Guess what? This is the very last piece of the serial Hannah’s Residency Permit! I know that
you will miss it terrible but please control your emotions. I had tickets to
leave Istanbul on the first of March and my appointment to pick up the
residency permit was the 28th of February. I kept my appointment
slip in my wallet so that I couldn’t possibly forget it. I planned out if
someone tried to mug me I would beg them to give me the appointment slip and I’d
let them keep the credit cards. I got a little melodramatic about the whole
thing if I’m honest. I went right after my chemistry class was over at 11am. I
had my next class at 2pm so I knew that I’d be a little late since it’s pretty
much an hour and a half each way to the building, but I figured it wouldn’t
take real long to pick the thing up. Oh, so wrong. So so wrong. I showed them
my appointment slip and they directed me to a room that contained at least 50
chairs and double that many people. This should have been my first intimation
that this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. I got there right after the
lunch break, which was supposed to end at 1pm. By about 20 past some of the
employees started rolling in again. The system went like this. Next to the door
to the room was a small table. Everyone put their slips on this table. One
employee took them. There was a long counter at one end of the room where 2-3
employees sat (depending on who was on chai break). The person who took the
slips carried them to a file cabinet that covered an entire wall up to his
shoulders. He went through it to find the permits that corresponded to the slips.
The permits were still attached to all the paperwork that went with them. Once
he had collected a stack he took them up to the front counter and they read off
the first name and nation of the person whose permit it was. One guy read loudly,
but the other two mumbled into their desks, which made it rather difficult to
hear especially since there were already a hundred people waiting in this room
and some of them were complaining pretty darn loudly, including one super
pissed off American woman. Some of the
permits weren’t ready yet (all of those seemed to be for either Syrians or
Somalis so I got the sense that there is a clear hierarchy of whose paperwork
gets priority). These people had their
names off by the employee who looked for the permits and he gave them new
appointments to pick them up, usually 2 weeks later. Again, none of the
employees seem to speak any English. My heart is going about 3000 beats a
minute at this point and I am fervently praying that my permit is ready. After
waiting for about an hour one of the guys calls “Hannah America” and I vault
myself over the chair in front of me and end up kind of sliding/skidding into
the desk. I sign the original paperwork again, the employee makes some small
conversation with me about studying Turkish and I have it. I dance my way out
of the building, smiling like a maniac. But I never have to go back again! And
I was only one and a half hours late to my class.

The next morning I woke up at 4:45 to get a taxi to Taksim,
where I could catch a bus to Ataturk Airport for my Turkish airlines flight to Nurnberg.
First of all, my taxi driver was super nice and didn’t try to rip me off at
all, which was really kind of him since I don’t function well at 5am. Second of
all, every good thing that you have ever heard about Turkish airlines is true.
My flight was an hour and a half and I got a full, tasty breakfast. And I had
three seats to myself so I slept after watching their excellent promotional
video for Kyrgyzstan, which was listed under “documentary”. My father’s friend Schippy met me at the
airport and we took the metro to the train station and had some lunch
(leberkase, or Bavarian meatloaf in my case, I have missed pork). We then
caught the train to Kitzingen and Schippy drove us the 10km or so from there to
Winterhausen, my father’s hometown. My Dad and I went to the bank to get my new
German debit card and everyone recognized my dad, despite the fact that he has
been living in the US since 1984. It was pretty impressive. My Aunt Marlena and
Uncle George from Austria were already there so I got to catch up with them and
then in the afternoon we went to see my Patin. The reason for the trip was that
Saturday was my Patin’s 75th birthday so as much of the family as
was available was getting together to celebrate with her. My coming was to be
the surprise present of the event. She lives in a small senior’s home now, and
likes it much better than she ever did living by herself. I walked into her
room and she was confused for a moment before realizing who I was and then she
was exceptionally pleased. My Uncle was so proud of himself for keeping my
visit a secret and we all chatted for quite a while.

View of Winterhausen

Let me interject here to say that I didn’t do all that much
talking because everything up to this point and really for the rest of the
weekend was in German. I speak some German, but I haven’t spoken for quite a
while or studied it since high school. Also the whole ‘Living in Turkey’ thing
means that I have forgotten a pretty good bit of my German and mostly wanted to
speak Turkish. However, due to having spent lots of time in countries where I
don’t speak the language very well I am very good at picking up on social cues.
I can tell when people are getting to the punch line of a joke and so I laugh
at the right moment. This is a very useful skill and I suggest to everyone that
you cultivate it. People think you are so much smarter than you actually are,
it’s awesome.

After a few hours, Patin went to dinner and we went to Aldi’s
to purchase real food (Aunt Marlena) and chocolate (me). I also bought beer and
wasn’t even carded. I didn’t realize it till I got home and then I felt half
grown up and half old. We had dinner and chatted before Dad and I went back to
my grandparent’s old home to sleep. (To clarify, my Patin owns a home right
next door that is rented out but the top floor is an apartment that the family
uses when we visit, Georg and Marlena were staying there and so we ate and
chatted there). I went to bed early and the next morning got to go to the local
bakery down the street and get myself Schinkenstange, which are the best
invention known to man and consist of smoked ham inside of croissants. Like I
said, best thing ever. That was Saturday, my Patin’s birthday, so we had
breakfast, read the paper, got ready and then my Dad and I walked across the
river to Sommerhausen to rendezvous with Georg and Marlena, who were picking up
Patin in the car. It was a pretty walk with the sun out and I was happy to be
in Germany with my family. We had a very nice lunch with the next door
neighbors. Next on the agenda was coffee and cake in the next town over,
Eibelstadt. My dad and I decided to walk through the vineyards to get there
since it was only a few kilometers, it was sunny and nice out, and we had just consumed
massive amounts of meat and potatoes in the form of sauerbraten and croquettes.
So we walked. There were a ton of people out walking and enjoying the sun. Germans
don’t just walk though. They were Nordic walking, they were exercising, they
were being very serious. You cannot just meander, you are walking! I found the
whole thing quite amusing and such a perfect example of the German personality.
Nothing is without purpose or schedule. I have my German moments, but I think
that overall, I’m a bit more of a meanderer.

The path in the vineyards

The coffee and cake was delicious and helped me to top out
at approximalty 30,000 calories for the day and my father and I walked home. We
chatted first with each other, then with Georg and Marlena when they got home and
then with Andrea, the woman who rents my Patin’s house and has done so for
years. It was again all in German but I followed most of what was going on and
it was nice to sit and have a nice glass of wine and listen to the ebb and flow
of conversation going on around me.

Sunday was quiet too, with another trip to the bakery,
breakfast, going through old photos in my grandparent’s house and a visit to
Maria im Weingarten, a mediaeval church in the area with a stunning view of the
Main river. We visited my Patin again and I said goodbye until this summer when
I plan on flitting around Europe, using Winterhausen as my home base. I poked
around the house some more, picking out some handwritten cookbooks and cookie
cutters as mementos. I had to be up early the next morning to reverse the
travel process and get back to Istanbul. My Dad slept through my departure but
Marlena made breakfast for me and Georg went down to the bakery to get me a few
more Schinkenstange before I have to say goodbye to them for quite a while. Everything
was massively organized until I got back to Istanbul and the half of me that is
German silently cried out in anguish at the inability to plan ahead. No matter.
I got home, unpacked and chatted with my roommates before falling asleep in a
bed that is starting to feel like my own.

View from Maria im Weingarten

It was strange saying goodbye in Germany. I’ve never spent
hugely extensive amounts of time there. I don’t speak the language all that
well. Yet I still can’t help but feel at home there, in the picturesque villages
of winding medieval streets and minuscule gardens. Winterhausen isn’t just my
father’s hometown. It was his mother’s hometown, and before that her parent’s
and so on and so forth for at least 500 years. As ridiculous as it sounds I’m
fairly sure that a place can almost be bred into you, that your genetics
recognize it as home even though your eyes and tongue don’t. Perhaps I’m just
being fanciful, and it’s just the beauty of the place that draws me to it. But
I’ve had the great good fortune to be in many beautiful places in this world and
none of them are quite the same sensation. Make of it what you will. Until my
next adventure, Aufwiedersehen!

I graduated from Michigan State University in 2014 with degrees in chemistry, anthropology and Turkic languages. When not out globetrotting, I can be found perched in front of my laptop, sharing my adventures with you.